President Joe La Mariana called the meeting to order promptly at 12:15
Pledge of Allegiance: Alex Buljan led us all in the pledge.
Invocation: Col. Alden Cunningham delivered the “thought for the day”. He expounded on two words: persistence and perseverance. Even though the words seem to mean the same thing Col. Cunningham referred to the words of President Calvin Coolidge who said,
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
Announcements: Col. Cunningham then informed us about the efforts to bring Rotary Means Business to the mid-Peninsula. With the Rotary Club of Millbrae there is a planned RMB event on Wednesday, March 16 from 5 to 7 pm. The format and venue are yet to be decided. The hope is to be able to meet in person. More to come.
President Joe gave us an update on former member Ray Larios who is currently on his way to a new assignment in Sadia Arabia. We wish him all the best and hope to see him again in the future.
President Joe then gave a shout out to Rotarians who recently contributed to the President’s Club. Michael Brownrigg and Bobba Venkatadri both made sizable donations to the Service Fund.
Chat Room: Chris Ramirez sent us off to our mini-group breakout sessions.
Student Guest: Jennifer Pence introduced one of our previous scholarship winners, Justin Vuu. Besides being awarded one of our college scholarships, Justin was part of our BHS Incentive program having been selected as an 8th grader at BIS. Justin has been attending San Jose State pursuing a major in packaging. Just shared his experience as an intern for Menasha Corporation at their Minnesota plant. There he spent is time designing and fabricating packaging for specific products. He showed us photos of the various projects he spent his time developing during his internship. This real-world experience in his major provided invaluable skills. Congratulations, Justin.
Newscast +: Even tough they were informed that their talents would not be required at this meeting, Fritz Brauner offered to provide some random, useless information. If it was there, I missed it.
Program:
Emily Matthews introduced our speakers,
Cameron Crowe and
Barbara Tiens, co-founders at Ponga.com. Ponga is all about your stories, shared privately in pictures. It's a software service that runs in your browser and lets you organize your pictures quickly and easily so that you can use them to privately share stories with family and friends. Individually or combined into albums, Ponga pictures are all private and shared only by invitation. Wrapped in context and shared as private links, Ponga pictures become like platters passed around a family to put stories back into circulation. By giving you access to the visual context of photographs, Ponga creates a new way to use pictures to capture research, crowdsource memories, and curate your family legacy for future generations. Cameron and Barbara demonstrated how their software actually works. To see this fascinating service, check out their website and their mission statement.
https://ping.ponga.com/ https://tips.ponga.com/who-we-are-and-why-were-here-9c57f2dfaff1
After a few questions and comments the meeting was adjourned.
